Ian McKellen, the actor, steps away from the microphone to finish his lecture with a speech written by William Shakespeare, from the collaboratively-written Elizabethan drama Sir Thomas More.
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding tooth ports and costs for transportation,
Actors are familiars of strangeness. The gay actor, such as Ian McKellen, especially so.
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
The actor is also familiar with kings and their desires. He garners honours, wears gongs and gowns. He dangles one of them as a bauble on his Christmas tree.
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
The actor's face is vivid and mobile. His eyes slit to challenge insolence. His teeth bare to brazen the strong hand. His shoulders lift and turn as he draws us to him and his arms reach out so that we settle in our seats. And in his extended palms.
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
The actor is an aged man, replete with wisdom, wit and wonder. Aged and ageless. Dapper and bohemian. His human presence is his power.
The Tory politician, the provincial Secretary of State, in the front row, hears the actor affirm that Margaret Thatcher should not have a state funeral in London because of her persistent support for anti-gay legislation. Margaret Thatcher's handbag is full of bile she unleashes on strangeness.
The actor knows that long life and survival of the species are advanced by the celebration of strangeness. The alternative is to be sharked by ruffians.
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you,
And we shark, one upon the other.
and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
Another actor, James Nesbitt, offers us Hamlet's outline of the human as a measure of the actor Ian McKellen.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
The actor is not a god. The actor is a divine human. There is no contradiction. There is strangeness embodied, and made present in the world.
All the beauty of the world, as manifest in the paragon of animals: nothing more than a quintessence of dust?
We are moved. Charmed. Magicked. By the actor, Ian McKellen.
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